If Marvel Studios can take the time to painstakingly find an unknown actor like Tom Holland to portray their very specific version of Peter Parker than they could afford to find a Jewish/Roma actress for Scarlet Witch and Asian actors for Dr. Strange and Iron Fist.

National treasure George Takei is going in hard on Marvel.
The social media icon took to his Facebook account to post about
Marvel’s casting of Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in the upcoming Doctor Strange film. He initially focused on the backpedaling done by Marvel in which they cast blame on the Chinese market as their reasoning to avoid association with Tibet. “So
let me get this straight. You cast a white actress so you wouldn’t hurt
sales … in Asia? This backpedaling is nearly as cringeworthy as the
casting. Marvel must think we’re all idiots,” writes Takei. “Marvel
already addressed the Tibetan question by setting the action and the
Ancient One in Kathmandu, Nepal, in the film. It wouldn’t have mattered
to the Chinese government by that point whether the character was white
or Asian, as it was already in another country. So this is a red
herring, and it’s insulting that they expect us to buy their
explanation. They cast Tilda because they believe white audiences want
to see white faces. Audiences, too, should be aware of how dumb and out
of touch the studios think we are.”

In
the comments, Takei argues that the casting is representative of a
deeper systemic problem of casting white actors in Asian roles:

To those who say, “She an actress, this is
fiction,” remember that Hollywood has been casting white actors in Asian
roles for decades now, and we can’t keep pretending there isn’t
something deeper at work here. If it were true that actors of Asian
descent were being offered choice roles in films, these arguments might
prevail. But there has been a long standing practice of taking roles
that were originally Asian and rewriting them for white actors to play,
leaving Asians invisible on the screen and underemployed as actors. This
is a very real problem, not an abstract one. It is not about political
correctness, it is about correcting systemic exclusion. Do you see the
difference?

He also addressed various reader rebuttals. For one, he
wants to point out that the idea of “color-blind casting” (that casting
should occur without regard to a person’s race or ethnicity) only works
if there were equity in Hollywood. The end result here is simply that
there are fewer actors of Asian descent getting major studio roles.

I fear you miss my point. I’m not against
colorblind casting. That is to say, when there is a role that can be
played by a black actor or an Asian one (such as Hermione in the play in
London), then I welcome it. But here we are talking about the
systematic erasure of Asian faces from film and media. It is so
prevalent that even when there IS an Asian role that could be played by
an Asian actor, it is given instead to a white actor. Do you not see the
issue here? We are talking about systemic exclusion, lack of
opportunity, and invisibility of a whole segment of our society, because
Hollywood is afraid to take chances with ethnic actors. Instead, we are
the butt of jokes (as the Oscars telecast showed) or are cast only in
certain roles that continue to marginalize us and send signals to
society that we are not leading men and women. I have a real problem
with that, and I’m the happy exception to all of this. But I feel for my
fellow Asian American actors who cannot find work because what little
work there is gets “whitewashed” for others to play.

Hollywood has no idea what to do with Asian people. And, given the fact that Hollywood often serves as a reflection of contemporary culture, this is a major problem. Aside from casting us as goofy comic relief (Long Duk Dong, really) or evil mystical ninjas (come on, Daredevil season 2), they just don’t know what to do with us. The confusion and ignorance around what we bring to the table sometimes gets so bad that rather than try and find out who we actually are, they’ll overwrite us with white characters, erasing us completely from narratives that inherently belong to one culture or another (looking at you, Ghost in the Shell).

Order is the barrier that holds back the flood of death. We must all of us on this train of life remain in our allotted station. We must each of us occupy our preordained particular position. Would you wear a shoe on your head? Of course you wouldn’t wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn’t belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head. I am a hat. You are a shoe. I belong on the head. You belong on the foot. Yes? So it is. In the beginning, order was proscribed by your ticket: First Class, Economy, and freeloaders like you. Eternal order is prescribed by the sacred engine: all things flow from the sacred engine, all things in their place, all passengers in their section, all water flowing. all heat rising, pays homage to the sacred engine, in its own particular preordained position. So it is. Now, as in the beginning, I belong to the front. You belong to the tail. When the foot seeks the place of the head, the sacred line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.